THE UNDIE 500 HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR UNDERWEAR

Every year, University of Canterbury Engineering Society Inc. (ENSOC) hold a charity event called the Undie 500. I heard about the Undie 500 over coffee at my neighbor’s home. As people talked, I struggled to keep up with the conversation. Were they really saying undie, or was this Kiwi-speak for indie? Were they talking about A) race cars, B) underwear or C) students drag-racing in their underwear?

It turns out Undie 500 has nothing to do with underwear, and not a great deal to do with racing (though it does involve driving). It’s an event in which the entrants purchase a car for under $500NZ, decorate it, and drive it from Christchurch to Dunedin – while wearing costumes. This year’s entries included a Lego car complete with smiling Lego-head costumes for driver and copilot, and an upside-down pig with tree trunk-sized legs sticking straight up from the roof. It could’ve doubled as a pink piñata for the Jolly Green Giant’s birthday party. One car wore a size 500-D sports bra on the grille and a size minus-2 G-string on the rear. This string was really, really skinny. A mini Cooper style car sported a pair of snug Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear.

To help legitimize the event, the organizers added a food drive. In addition to buying and decorating cars, students were to donate cans of food to the Dunedin Food Bank.
Now for the driving part of the event. To get from Christchurch to Dunedin you go straight down Highway 1. Let me make this clear: You drive out of Christchurch, turn left onto Highway One, and drive until you run into Dunedin. I suspect that each student entering—I mean donating to—the Undie 500 has driven this route multiple times. Yet the engineering student organizers, like any thoughtful organizer, give every driver a roadmap showing exactly how to navigate straight down Highway One. Going that extra mile, so to speak, the organizers also highlighted and provided distances between the six bars located along the route. College students—always thinking, always preparing the way, at least when beer is involved.

Maybe it’s my American English, but I thought this event sounded a lot like a wild and wacky car rally and not much like a charity event. But maybe that’s a Kiwi thing.

The rally, I mean charity event, ended on Castle Street, where the students admired each other’s costumes and decorated cars. Then, naturally, these creative minds needed something else to do. So these bright future engineers—who will one day discover how to run our cars using nothing more than used chewing gum and recycled beer cans—decided it would be really cool to drag a couch from an apartment into the middle of the street. Then, after the novelty wore off of sitting on the couch and having the Christchurch late arrivals nearly run them over, these highly imaginative college brains decided to set the couch on fire. Because once you’ve navigated the complicated route from Christchurch to Dunedin, probably while loaded with alcohol, what could be cooler than starting a bon fire in the middle of a busy street with a couch that’s not even yours?

I’ll tell you what—jumping over the couch. The first student launched himself into the crackling, amber filled air. His tiny brain electrodes bravely slogged through the alcohol to connect with his brain cells and deliver the following message: “Don’t do stupid things.” This connection was accomplished while he was in midair, at which point he realized he could not actually jump over the entire couch and instead landed squarely on the couch, which was totally lit up in flames. Fortunately, not all his friends were as drunk as he was and, using their great powers of deduction (because after all these are college students), dragged him from the burning couch and stamped him out on the street. They also called 111 (that’s Kiwi talk for 911).

At this point, the Stupidity Center in Jumping Jack’s brain realized he would probably not get back his deposit on the Lego costume since the left sleeve was black and charred, and so was his arm.
So let’s recap. In New Zealand, charity events look a lot like road rallies, 111 and 911 are the same thing, and college students everywhere like to drink and come up with cool things to do that frequently land them in the hospital.

It was either a wildly successful or a wildly scandalous party, depending on which side of the police pepper spray you were on.

Advertisement